Supreme Court ends lawsuits alleging that Trump illegally profited from business interests
InternationalJan 26. 2021Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, center left, is accompanied by Chief Justice John Roberts as they walk to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 15, 2017, in Washington, D.C. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Ricky Carioti.
By The Washington Post · Robert Barnes, Ann E. Marimow
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday put an end to lawsuits alleging that former president Donald Trump violated a constitutional anti-corruption prohibition by profiting from his business empire while president.
The justices, without comment or noted dissent, declined to hear Trump’s request to consider lower court orders that said lawsuits could go forward, agreeing with those on both sides of the issue that the cases became moot with Trump no longer in office.
The justices also vacated the lower court judgments in the cases, one of which was filed by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.
It means that there is no definitive answer after years of legal wrangling over the Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which prohibit presidents and others from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments without congressional approval.
The question has rarely been presented because presidents rarely maintain active business interests in office, as Trump did. Much of the litigation turned on the president’s interest in the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, which became a magnet for foreign dignitaries and others doing business with the government.
The litigation was consumed with questions about who had the right to bring such a suit, and legal questions without precedent.
“We are proud that because of our case, a court ruled on the meaning of ’emoluments’ for the first time in American history, finding that the Constitution prohibits federal officials from accepting almost anything of value from foreign or domestic governments,” District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said in a joint statement.
They added: “History will note that at every step of this case, President Trump and political appointees at the Department of Justice went to extreme lengths to prevent us from uncovering the true extent of his corruption. He attempted to short-circuit the rules of legal procedure to have our case dismissed and avoid discovery into his finances, arguing that the law did not apply to him.”
Their case was one of three testing for the first time the Constitution’s ban on the country’s leaders engaging in private business relationships with foreign governments.
The Supreme Court declined in October to take up a case brought by Democratic members of Congress led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. The lawmakers had appealed a Washington D.C. Circuit ruling that blocked individual members of Congress from trying to enforce the foreign emoluments clause.
In a third case in New York, brought by the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of Trump’s hospitality industry competitors, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said a lower-court judge had improperly thrown out the case in late 2017.
The lawsuit alleged that Trump was illegally profiting from his hotels and restaurants in New York and the District. The full appeals court declined to rehear the case this summer and Trump asked the high court to intervene.
President Xi Jinping called on the world to abandon “ideological prejudice” and shun an “outdated Cold-War mentality” as he signaled that China will continue to forge its own path regardless of western criticism.
It’s vital to stay committed to international law and international rules “instead of staying committed to supremacy,” Xi told the Davos Agenda event on Monday, in his first address since Joe Biden entered the White House. “Confrontation will lead us to a dead end,” he said, and urged a return to mutual respect to help the recovery from the pandemic.
“To build small circles and start a new Cold War, to reject, threaten or intimate others, to willfully impose decoupling, supply disruptions, or sanctions, or to create isolation or estrangement, will only push the world into division and even confrontation,” he said.
Xi’s speech had been widely anticipated for the tone it would set for relations between the world’s biggest economies over the next four years. Though Xi did not name Biden by name, many of his comments were clearly targeted at the new U.S. administration.
Xi repeated many of the same talking points about multilateralism and “win-win” outcomes that he deployed in his last address to Davos four years ago, days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, but he also signaled that he does not intend to change course in the face of U.S. pressure.
“Each country is unique with its own history, culture and social system, and none is superior to the other,” Xi said, warning against imposing a “hierarchy on human civilization” or forcing one’s own systems onto others.
China’s leaders have long embraced Davos as a forum to showcase economic reforms while sidestepping difficult questions about politics. Former Premier Li Peng visited in 1992 as China sought to attract foreign investors in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
Xi signaled his desire to put aside political issues which have helped drive a deterioration in ties with Western countries, including his abolition of term limits and use of “re-education” camps in the far western region of Xinjiang. “No two leaves are identical,” Xi told his online audience.
Xi’s desire to set aside political differences won’t be an easy sell. On the campaign trail, Biden said China’s policies in Xinjiang were “unconscionable” and even branded Xi a “thug.” The European Union also officially labeled China as a “systemic rival” in 2019, although it went on to sign an investment deal with the Asian nation in the final days of 2020.
During the address, Xi hinted at his desire to reestablish high-level dialogue with the incoming administration, calling for countries to “enhance political trust through strategic communication.” The Chinese leader succeeded in building a cordial personal relationship with Trump even as the two powers descended into a trade war. That effort began with a trip to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in April 2017 and led to the development of official dialogue tracks which eventually disintegrated over the course of Trump’s presidency.
By the time Biden was sworn in, more than 100 officially organized exchange forums had been disbanded, companies like Huawei Technologies have been hit with export curbs and tariffs imposed on almost $500 billion of products. While Biden hasn’t given many specifics on how he’ll deal with these and other flashpoints, he has signaled a shift from confrontation to competition.
In his speech, Xi steered clear of the triumphal tone evident in some of his domestic addresses in recent years. In a speech last September, Xi said China’s pandemic response demonstrated the “superiority” of China’s political system. In others, he has argued that “China is moving closer to the center of the world stage.”
Still, the president spoke from a position of strength: China has been the only major economy to report growth amid the pandemic last year, and economists are forecasting an expansion of 8.3% this year, compared with 4.1% in the U.S.
LONDON – At least 225 million full-time jobs disappeared worldwide last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report published Monday by the International Labor Organization, losses four times worse than those from the global financial crisis in 2009. But the ultrarich have seen their wealth soar.
According to another report released Monday, by the anti-poverty nonprofit group Oxfam, the combined wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has risen by more than $500 billion since the crisis began – enough to vaccinate the entire planet and then some, according to the organization.
Both sets of findings identify rising inequity as one of the pandemic’s principal outcomes. “Job destruction has disproportionately affected low-paid and low-skilled jobs,” which “points to the risk of an uneven recovery, leading to still greater inequality in the coming years,” the ILO found. That unevenness is already apparent: Global poverty could take 14 times longer to return to pre-pandemic levels than the recovery of the world’s wealthiest, according to Oxfam.
Last year, 8.8% of global working hours were lost, according to the report by the ILO, a U.N. agency. It found “unprecedented disruption” among global labor markets, and that women and young people have felt the worst impact. Globally, women saw 5% employment loss in 2020, as opposed to 3.9% for men.
“In line with the focus of Oxfam’s report on inequality, ILO’s estimates confirm that the crisis has resulted in relatively larger employment and income losses for women and young people, along with the low-paid and low-skilled,” Sher Verick, head of the ILO’s employment strategies for inclusive transformation unit, told The Washington Post. “Certain sectors have been hit harder, such as accommodation and food services.”
Employment loss among people ages 15 to 24 stood at 8.7%. The data “highlights the all too real risk of a lost generation,” according to the report.
Guy Ryder, the director general of the ILO, said during a news briefing that the effect of the pandemic had been greater than not only that of the financial crisis but also that of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Job losses, he said, were likely to continue through 2021 – although he noted that battered economies could begin to rebuild once vaccination efforts start to take effect.
“I am pleased to say that there is some relatively good news in all of this, that we do see tentative signs of recovery,” he said. “These signs are fragile, they are uncertain, and the prospects are notably uneven.”
The Oxfam findings also suggest a slow path to economic recovery: It could take at least a decade for the world’s poorest to recover from the health crisis, while the 1,000 richest people already have made back their losses and the wealthiest 10 have earned more than $500 billion during the pandemic.
Authors of the report said the pandemic could trigger a simultaneous rise in inequality nearly everywhere, for the first time since records began.
“The virus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race,” the report said.
British lawmaker David Lammy of the Labour Party called the Oxfam findings “truly staggering.”
“The wealth of ten of the world’s richest men has increased by more than £400bn during the pandemic – more than enough to vaccinate every person in the world,” he tweeted.
Lawmaker Claudia Webbe, also of the Labour Party, branded Oxfam’s findings “obscene” and called for a wealth tax to be placed on the ultrarich – a proposal that some experts say could be the answer to the United Kingdom’s financial recovery after the government was forced to spend billions of pounds in borrowed money to save jobs and lives during the coronavirus pandemic.
Britain’s Wealth Tax Commission says taxing the rich would be a more equitable solution to helping the country’s recovery as opposed to increasing taxes on goods or incomes, political decisions they argue would damage those who need the money to survive.
“It is morally repugnant to allow the poorest people to continue to pay the price for the crisis, when it is clear that a fair tax on the richest could make such a difference,” Rebecca Gowland, Oxfam’s head of inequality, said last month, the BBC reported.
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Monday added travelers from South Africa to the list of those barred from entering to the United States – the latest step in an effort to help contain the spread of the coronavirus and fast-moving variants that have surfaced in that country and others in recent weeks.
The move also extends a ban on travelers from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 other European countries that had been set to expire Tuesday under a proclamation signed by former president Donald Trump shortly before he left office.
“With the pandemic worsening and more contagious variants spreading, this isn’t the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said during a Monday news conference. She said the move was part of the administration’s “science-driven response” to the coronavirus.
The restrictions on travelers from South Africa are set to take effect Saturday.
In an interview on “CBS This Morning,” Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said extending the ban and including South Africa “clearly will be helpful.” Fauci said it is prudent to restrict travel of non-U. S. citizens.
“We have concern about the mutation that’s in South Africa,” he said. “It is clearly different and more ominous than the one in the U.K.”
While some have questioned the value of travel bans, Fauci said one important difference this time around is that the ban dovetails with a requirement that all international travelers to the U.S. show proof of a negative coronavirus test.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the variant of the coronavirus first seen in the United Kingdom would become the dominant strain in the U.S. within about two months. The South African variant, however, has not yet been identified in the U.S.
On Monday, Moderna said its vaccine will protect people from both the U.K. and South African variants of the virus. However, the vaccines’ response to the South African variant was slightly diminished, officials said. As a result, the company said it work to develop a new vaccine that can be added to the current two-dose regimen.
The Biden administration is also taking steps to require travelers to quarantine after their arrival in the United States and to be tested a second time. Details on how those measures will be implemented are expected in the coming days.
Restrictions on travelers from 26 countries in Europe have been in place since mid-March, while Brazil was added to the list in May.
Under the ban, most non-U. S. citizens who have been in those countries in the past 14 days are barred from entering the United States. However, some exceptions are in place.
The extension of the ban comes as a new testing requirement for international travelers is set to take effect Tuesday.
Under the requirement announced earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all international travelers to the U.S. will be required to show proof of a negative coronavirus test before boarding a flight. PCR and antigen tests will be acceptable.
Those who refuse to be tested will not be allowed to fly. Travelers must be tested within three days before boarding their flights and airlines will be required to review travelers’ documentation.
“As variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to emerge in countries around the world, there is growing evidence of increased transmissibility of some of these variants, as well as unknown health and vaccine implications,” the CDC said in a statement. “Testing before and after travel is a critical layer to slow the introduction and spread of COVID-19 and emerging variants.”
However, the agency said it would no longer issue waivers to countries with a limited ability to test travelers. The CDC had previously said it would allow carriers to apply for two-week waivers from the requirement.
“With the U.S. already in surge status, the testing requirement for all air passengers will help slow the spread of the virus as we work to vaccinate the American public,” the agency said.
In addition to requiring proof of a negative test, Biden also has directed officials to explore the feasibility of requiring international travelers to quarantine or self-isolate once they arrive in the U.S.
The reinstatement of the ban is a blow to airlines that had hoped testing could replace bans and quarantines. Industry surveys have shown that people are more reluctant to travel if they must quarantine.
Since taking office, Biden has acted quickly to impose rules intended to reduce the spread of the virus as the administration seeks to ramp up efforts to vaccinate as many people as possible.
Last week, he signed an order mandating masks in airports and on many planes, trains, ships and intercity buses. The order followed one the president signed Wednesday, requiring that people wear masks on federal property.
Biden signs order pushing federal government to buy more American-made products
InternationalJan 26. 2021President Joe Biden signs executive orders at the White House on Friday, Jan 22, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford
By The Washington Post · David J. Lynch, Jeff Stein, Ashley Parker
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Monday signed an order aimed at forcing the federal government to buy more goods produced in the United States, a key part of his campaign pledge to revive domestic manufacturing.
Standing in front of a blue backdrop reading “The Future Will Be Made in America,” the president said he was directing regulators to tighten the definition of American-made products and creating a new position in the Office of Management and Budget to oversee purchases of domestic goods.
The president’s order also will make it harder for federal agencies to issue waivers allowing the government to purchase some products made overseas. Under the new rules, agency officials will be required to justify such choices to the White House.
Biden acknowledged that efforts to promote domestic content have been a familiar part of previous presidents’ agendas. President Donald Trump issued new regulations increasing the share of a product’s components that must be produced domestically to qualify as made-in-the-USA one day before he left office.
“This is different and not the same,” Biden insisted.
The executive order will create a website where American businesses can see what contracts are being awarded to foreign vendors, allowing them to alert the government to the availability of a domestic alternative, Biden said.
The order reflects the shifting consensus in American politics away from free trade and toward direct government intervention to promote U.S. manufacturers, a position Trump embraced. The pandemic has intensified calls for the United States to shore up its domestic manufacturing capabilities, given gaps last year in the medical supply chain that left U.S. medical workers scrambling for personal protective equipment.
“We’re going to make sure that they buy American and are made in America,” Biden said Friday.
The measure drew labor union plaudits, with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calling it “a good first step in revitalizing U.S. manufacturing.” But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the initiative probably would not bring home lost manufacturing jobs and would boost the cost of government projects.
Turning Biden’s aspirations for reviving domestic manufacturing into reality may be difficult. Trump’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, pushed aggressively for similar provisions but was often rebuffed by other officials who argued that his proposals risked backlash from foreign nations as well as higher costs for U.S. taxpayers.
Trump’s last-minute regulations, which take effect Feb. 22, give American companies the edge over foreign rivals even if their products cost 20% to 30% more.
Major U.S. allies oppose such efforts, fearing the loss of lucrative contracts. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised his concerns in a phone call with Biden last week, officials in Ottawa said.
An aggressive Buy America campaign also may complicate Biden’s hopes of securing a united allied front to meet rising Chinese influence.
“The Biden administration is sending a clear signal that it intends to aggressively protect U.S. commercial and trade interests, belying the hopes of U.S. trading partners anticipating a softer touch from the new government,” said Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official now teaching at Cornell University. “It is clear that the Biden administration is hardly rushing to usher in a new era of global trade and economic cooperation.”
The administration is determined to move beyond the traditional single-minded focus on price and efficiency in its approach to trade policy.
“As we sort out what globalization is going to look like in the future, we’re headed toward a more thoughtful policy,” said one trade specialist advising the administration, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the press.
The federal government spends as much as $600 billion annually on contracts, but a meaningful portion of that money goes to foreign businesses, said Lori Wallach, a trade expert at Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog organization.
It is unclear how much federal contracting money goes abroad, Wallach said. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says 97% of federal procurement funds go to “U.S. firms.” But that figure includes the foreign subsidiaries of American corporations, meaning the purchases could support workers in Vietnamese or Mexican factories rather than Americans.
Under a World Trade Organization accord on government procurement, the U.S. generally has been more receptive to foreign firms bidding on contracts than other countries have.
In 2010, the most recent year such data is available, the U.S. opened $837 billion in government contract competitions to foreign firms, more than twice the combined figure of the next five countries – the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Norway and Canada, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The U.S. that year allowed foreign companies to bid on about 48% of its $1.7 trillion government procurement market while those five nations put out to bid 16% of their combined $2.4 trillion market.
William Reinsch, a trade specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Monday’s White House announcement would have little immediate impact. But by raising domestic content requirements, the administration could affect corporate supply chain decisions.
“This is going to be a long-term play, not a short-term play,” said Reinsch, a Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration.
Biden has the power to reduce the list of 60 countries whose companies are granted waivers from Buy America regulations, meaning their products are treated as if they were made-in-America for purposes of government contracting. Those waivers, which he said Monday have been issued “with impunity,” will be permitted only under “very limited circumstances,” such as to meet national security requirements.
Loopholes in government procurement regulations must be closed before Biden launches other major initiatives, according to Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
“Biden is envisioning this massive new federal investment in infrastructure, in clean energy, in economic recovery, so getting the updated statutes in place ahead of this spending is going to be key to its success,” he said.
Pentagon spending also could be ripe for a greater Buy America focus, according to a trade specialist advising the Biden administration. A 2018 Defense Department study found “a surprising level” on foreign suppliers, including the Chinese and recommended that the government mitigate it by expanding taxpayer investment in low-level defense manufacturers.
Most economists have panned Buy American provisions, saying they raise costs for the U.S. government.
“Neither protectionism nor purposefully raising the cost of the federal government will help the economy grow any faster,” said Adam Ozimek, an economist at the freelancing site Upwork, adding that he had not been briefed on the details of the Biden plan.
By The Washington Post · Juliet Eilperin, Dino Grandoni
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is poised to impose a moratorium on new federal oil, gas and coal leasing Wednesday, according two individuals briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan was still being finalized. The move will deliver on one of Biden’s boldest climate campaign pledges but will encounter stiff resistance from the fossil fuel industry.
The White House has prepared documents that would halt new oil and gas auctions on federal lands and waters for one year, these individuals said, and coal leasing for three years.The moratorium would not affect existing leases, meaning drilling would continue on public land in the West as well as in the Gulf of Mexico.
The memo remains a draft subject to final approval, said one individual close to the White House who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it had not been formally announced. It was unclear whether the new administration will exclude metallurgical coal, which is primarily used to make steel, as opposed to thermal coal, which is basically burned to produce electricity. Metallurgical coal was excluded from an Obama-era coal moratorium on the grounds that steel was required for infrastructure projects.
Biden plans to outline steps Wednesday aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions and elevating the role of science in federal decision-making. Asked about the matter, both the White House and the Interior Department declined to comment.
During the campaign, Biden pledged to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters,” without specifying exactly what such a ban would entail.
Fossil fuel leasing on federal and tribal lands accounts for nearly a quarter of the country’s annual carbon output. It also generated $11.7 billion in tax revenue for the federal, state, local and tribal governments last year, according to the Interior Department’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue.
Environmentalists say the pause will allow the new administration to assess whether taxpayers are being adequately compensated for the minerals extracted from lands they own.
“By pausing the broken leasing system and halting the giveaways to oil and gas executives, President Biden has an opportunity to meaningfully fix the leasing system for the first time in nearly four decades with solutions that work for the public and which incorporate ambitious conservation, taxpayer fairness, and climate goals,” Jenny Rowland-Shea, senior policy analyst for public lands at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, wrote in an email. “We can make sure our public lands and coasts are preserved, accessible and beneficial to everyone – not abused by oil and gas corporations.”
But oil and gas groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, counter that freezing new leasing will deprive state and local governments, as well as the U.S. Treasury, of needed revenue. Last week, the industry criticized the Interior Department when it dictated that any new leases or permits issued during the next 60 days needed the approval of a top-ranking Biden appointee before they could be finalized.
API President Mike Sommers said that move alone will damage domestic energy producers while benefiting ones abroad.
“Restricting development on federal lands and waters is nothing more than an ‘import more oil’ policy,” Sommers said. “Energy demand will continue to rise – especially as the economy recovers – and we can choose to produce that energy here in the United States or rely on foreign countries hostile to American interests.”
About 22 percent of U.S. oil production and 12 percent of natural gas production takes place on federal lands and waters, according to API.
A moratorium would have contrasting effects on different oil-producing regions, hamstringing drillers in New Mexico, where the federal government controls huge swaths of land, while leaving those producing on state or private land across the border in Texas unscathed.
“It feels a little bit unfair,” said Raye Miller, head of a small, nine-well oil-producing operation called Regeneration Energy in southeastern New Mexico. “We’re very concerned with the direction things are headed.”
But drilling on public lands will continue even with a moratorium on new leasing, since industry operators hold plenty of undeveloped leases in their portfolios. Only about half of the nearly 20,000 applications to drill approved between 2014 and 2019 are actually in use, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. More than 13 million acres of land leased for oil and gas were not producing during fiscal year 2019.
While the oil and gas lobby gears up for a fight, environmental advocates are sustaining pressure on Biden to keep his commitment to end leasing and permitting on federal acreage. Among them is Oceana, a marine conservation group, which is set to release a report Tuesday detailing how reversing the Trump administration’s plan to open up nearly all U.S. coastal waters to drilling would prevent more than 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
So far, activists are pleased with Biden’s quick climate actions. “At this point, I’m excited about the president’s agenda,” said Diane Hoskins, a campaign director at Oceana.
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Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, center left, is accompanied by Chief Justice John Roberts as they walk to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 15, 2017, in Washington, D.C. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Ricky Carioti.
President Joe Biden signs executive orders at the White House on Friday, Jan 22, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford
President Joe Biden
